The Racing Week On Wednesday - News Round Up For The Week Of 11th March

Submitted by David Emmett on Wed, 2015-03-11 22:59

It has been a relatively quiet week in the world of motorcycle racing, with much of the focus on preparations for 2015 rather than actual on-track action. The past week has seen riders spending more time on stage than on track, as many teams have presented their 2015 racing programs. This is but the calm before the storm, however: from Saturday, there is another bumper period of world championship action, with MotoGP testing at Qatar from 14th-16th March, Moto2 hitting Jerez from 17th-19th, followed by the second round of World Superbikes at the Chang circuit in Thailand from 20th-22nd.

There have been some bikes from other series circulating in the past week, however. The British BSB series has been testing in Spain, the MXGP championship has raced in Thailand, two weeks ahead of the World Superbike series' first visit to the country, and in the US, Florida is gearing up for the Daytona 200.

A piece of history?

That race will be a rather peculiar affair. When Daytona Motorsports Group lost the contract to run the AMA road racing series, tough negotations began with MotoAmerica, the new sanctioning body for AMA. The DMG overestimated their bargaining position, and MotoAmerica were happy to pass up on the Daytona 200. Once a historic event with a big name line up, the race has slipped gradually into international obscurity and domestic impopularity.

Stripped of AMA sanctioning, it is being run under the auspices of ASRA, the American Sportsbike Racing Association. It has still managed to attract some popular American riders, however. Josh Herrin will be racing at the 200, as will Danny Eslick, Steve Rapp, Geoff May, and Dave Sadowski. Unfortunately, the race will not be televised, the organizers not managing to strike a deal with Fans Choice TV in time for the event. The weekend will also see the top US flat trackers race.

Blinking in the spotlights

A number of teams have used the hiatus before the final tests of the year to present their new projects for 2015. The biggest launch was the Aprilia Racing event in Milan, where the Noale factory presented their MotoGP, World Superbikes and FIM Superstock Cup teams for 2015. There was plenty of interest at the launch, most of which can be gleaned from the interview we did with Aprilia Corse boss Romano Albesiano.

The most important fact to come from the presentation is that this is to be a development year for Aprilia in MotoGP. The main aim is to gather data, especially from the new-for-2016 Michelin tires, which will be used to build a completely new bike for next year. That leaves riders Alvaro Bautista and Marco Melandri to function as test mules, something which Bautista took very well, but Melandri less so.

Ambitions are higher in World Superbikes, with Leon Haslam currently leading the championship, and Jordi Torres making a strong debut, but the real proof of where the RSV4 stands will come in Thailand, where horsepower will count more. Albesiano was visibly annoyed by the removal of the air restrictors for the twins (he diplomatically avoided mentioning Ducati, but with EBR still with a lot of work to do, it was clear who his ire was aimed at), fearing that the Ducatis could have an unfair horsepower advantage. We will see over the next few races.

At the same time as Aprilia, the Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS Racing team presented their riders in all three Grand Prix classes for 2015. In doing so, they simultaneously staked a claim for longest team name in racing, and ensured that no journalist worth is salt will use the full team name. No doubt Scott Redding in MotoGP, and Tito Rabat and Alex Márquez in Moto2 will be referred to as the Marc VDS team, while Fabio Quartaro and Jorge Navarro will be labeled Estrella Galicia 0,0. There is a lot of excitement around Quartararo, the French youngster being tipped for greatness, despite not having raced in a single Grand Prix so far. But Tito Rabat will be keen to defend his title – as proud carrier of the #1 plate – and Scott Redding will be hoping to make more rapid progress towards the podium than he has shown so far during testing.

The Forward Racing team also presented their MotoGP and Moto2 line ups in Milan, now with the backing of Swiss eyewear brand Athinà. Stefan Bradl set out his aim of securing the top Open bike slot on the Forward Yamaha, but he may find it tougher this year than the man he replaced in the team, Aleix Espargaro, did in 2014. The Open class Ducatis of Team Avintia have been impressive, with Hector Barbera showing he still has plenty of pace.

The link up with Athinà did show up the dangers of using a foreign language for branding. The Italian website names ten character traits it has based its models on. It is hard to imagine "simpering" as a quality you might associate with MotoGP.

It's all gone a bit Ajax

It isn't just bike liveries which have changed in the past week. The MotoGP.com website has got a new look, after undergoing a complete revamp. The whole site now looks a good deal slicker than it did, and the site is very responsive, despite the heavy use of Javascript to spice it up. The functionality appears to have remained much the same, though all of the sections of the website are now more readily accessible.

If there is one downside to the MotoGP.com redesign, it is that the site now looks like many other modern websites. The MCN website underwent a similar redesign recently, and the concept looks nigh on identical. Website layouts are subject to fashion as much as any other branch of design, it seems. Then again, as the owner of a website designed by someone with no discernible visual design skills whatsoever (i.e. me), I would say that, wouldn't I?

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau

In Wales, the public enquiry into the deregistering of common land for the Circuit of Wales is underway. What that means, for those not conversant with the vagaries of common law as used in England and Wales, is that a large tract of land, currently publicly held and with public rights of access, is to have that access withdrawn, so that the Circuit of Wales can start to build on it. To gain permission to use that land, the Circuit of Wales has to provide replacement land. The point of the hearing is to establish whether the replacement land is an acceptable alternative to the environmentally sensitive land the Circuit of Wales wishes to use.

The public inquiry is due to take eight days, with the first two days already taken place. The outcome of the inquiry will be presented to the Welsh Government, who will make a decision on the basis its findings. It is the last major planning obstacle facing the circuit, though there are still one or two hurdles to be taken. Not the least of which is the small matter of finance...

The non-appearance of the JR Racing team at Phillip Island had been widely expected, but the situation got rather ugly this week. First, the team manager, Gemma Voces Pons, issued a press release stating that neither she, nor any other member of the team, had received any payment of any kind from the team's owners. Then, Ayrton Badovini expressed his disappointment with the situation, saying he had only signed with the team because Troy Corser had linked his name to the project.

Now, one of the owners of the team, Yoselyn Robinson, has issued a statement condemning the actions of Gemma Pons. Robinson claimed that Pons had spoken out of turn, jeopardizing the progress being made with funding of the team. The delay was all a matter of bureaucratic hold ups, of which Pons had been informed, according to Robinson. Robinson added that she hoped to be able to announce 'positive news' very soon.

The situation – a minor farce mixed with a major tragedy – is sadly all too typical of motorcycle racing, even at the highest level. Projects are undertaken more in hope than in expectation, and even when the season does get underway, teams all too often leave a trail of unpaid bills behind them. Discussion of the JR situation on Twitter produced a wealth of evidence from people in various paddock who had not been paid for the services, including journalists, photographers, riders and mechanics. There are rumors of riders at every level not being paid the money they were promised, and off the record, riders are quick to condemn team managers and personal managers.

Why does this happen? People cannot bring themselves to walk away. Motorcycle racing shares one thing in common with other sports, and with art, music, fashion, film making: it is done for the love of the sport, not for financial gain. We all see the big names at the top of the sport, and read of their massive salaries, yet those who achieve that status are few and far between. There may be seven or eight riders on seven figure salaries, but there are probably the same number on salaries not much beyond the minimum wage, or on no money at all. There are others who will have been promised good incomes, but who will spend the next few years in court trying to get the money they are owed.

Motorcycle racing runs on passion, and a desire to be involved. People at every level – riders, mechanics, journalists, photographers, cooks, drivers, umbrella girls, PR staff, coordinators – sign contracts knowing deep in their hearts that they will be lucky to get paid at all, let alone paid what they are owed. They do it anyway, for love of the sport, and because they can't stay away. It is surprising just how little you need to survive when you are nourished by your dreams.

I'm a designer and I can support your "amateur" critique of the new motogp.com site David. I was totally underwhelmed with the creativity and as a user totally overwhelmed with the barrage of unorganized clutter that the new layout presents.

Like you noted, it's the same [lame] content. Other than the streaming of races and stuff with no commercials (for that it's totally worth the cost of the annual subscription) I rarely visit the site.

I still come to you and your team for the real goods on what's going on in our favourite sport.

The only things I visit the motogp site for are the dates of the upcoming races, and occasionally to look up stats on past sessions. The actual written content is normally sanitised puff pieces. motomatters is much better for actual journalism.

Yep, the bulk of the motogp site is just PR dept fluff. The video and live timing would be useful but my internet connection is not reliably good enough so that leaves occasionally looking up results. Can't say I like the new layout but maybe I'm just grumpy from race deprivation.

here a webdev, what I find annoying is that it really is cluttered. Too little spacing, too much info for the estate used. I mainly (only) use the video-section, and there they used black boxes on a dark-blue bg. But what I find most annoying... when filtered on "all videos" & "MotoGP class", they don't maintain that choice when the page gets refreshed... annoying as h*ll.

Keep motomatters.com design the way it is David. I love its simplicity and the fact that other than Scott's incredible photos your site is pure intellectual content. No fluff. And interesting and respectful commentary.

You should look at getting a coder to tweak your settings for mobile as the tables don't view properly on iPhone 5 (they get chopped off on the right hand side).

And maybe they're still working on it or I'm missing it, but you used to be able to see the photos from all races and practices back to like '05. Now they only have last season as far as I can see. Really don't like how the photo viewing is setup

Yup, part of the charm of motomatters is the basic design. I'm so sick of people dreaming up new ways for me to "consume content". Just lay out the facking text on the facking page, high contrast, easy to read colors, give me the content, allow me to comment. It's not rocket science around here in terms of site design, but it IS really good journalism of one of my favorite sports.

If you were going to do anything new and spicy, I'd suggest branching out more into social, beyond your twitter feed. A Facebook page would be handy for driving traffic to this site. Having your photographers supply you with photos to fatten up your instagram stream during race weekends would also drive interest. Of course, all of that kind of thing requires resources, and I am loathe to suggest you take any resources away from your sterling reporting to focus on marketing.

While the Daytona 200 will not be aired......
The AMA Flat track races will be on fanschoice.tv.! Live today 3/12 and tomorrow 3/13. Practice kicks off at 3:30pm eastern time and heat races kick off at 7:30 pm.
Cant wait.http://www.fanschoice.tv/

"If you were going to do anything new and spicy, I'd suggest branching out more into social, beyond your twitter feed. A Facebook page would be handy for driving traffic to this site. Having your photographers supply you with photos to fatten up your instagram stream during race weekends would also drive interest."

Please keep things how they are. More and more sites are letting services like Facebook take over vital functions, or the Facebook page robs so much traffic that the main site disappears.

Many people don't have Facebook accounts. Or Twitter accounts. Or Instagram accounts. There are still a few safe havens on the web where you can slap down a subscription fee, consume thoughtful content without being tracked or blinded by annoying ads, and avoid the lowest common denominator factor often found on "social media."

In short: Motomatters is nearly all I have left! Don't let freakin' Facebook kill it!

I'm just surprised they're having any race at all. The state of road racing here is well documented so I'm not gonna beat a dead horse. Really curious to see who they have calling the race on Fanschoice.

I would complain more about the coverage but I guess I'm just happy the fact it's on at all! Probably just gonna buy the motogp video pass this year. I think I can get Bein through my cable, but... they shouldn't get any more of my money

but seriously, why the hell is a Twitter from the winner of today's Melbourne F1 V8 Supercar race displayed in the "MotoGP" feed to the right of this story? So much for looking forward to getting home from work and watching the race I recorded today.

The new MotoGP.com is so bad that I have subscribed to this site. If it wasn't for all the video content I would never use it again. Please keep motomatters simple and easy to use. And keep up the great work.